Are Your Electrical Systems Keeping Up With Your Race Car? An Interview with Automated Racing Technologies
By Deborah WFO, Bluebaugh Racing
Why are the world’s fastest Nitrous Pro Mod Racers so fast? The bottom line is that a consistent race car using 100% 
of its potential wins races. The question is how do you make a race car more consistent and know that you are maximizing potential with so much going on? I met with Chris Patrick of Automated Racing Technologies to get some answers. Patrick is the inventor of the Total Function Control (TFC-5) automated race car management system. The TFC-5 is a light weight digital processor that can give you total programmable control of all the electronics and electrical components in your race car at the touch of a screen. This system just may be one of Jim Halsey and Pat Stoken’s little secrets to success.
What we are really talking about here is the precision and speed of electricity applied in race car technology. Patrick’s digital system runs more than 23 times faster than conventional analog systems with out absorbing an abundance of electricity. There are three basic parameters the system addresses.
The primary function has to do with making a race car repeat exactly from run to run. Tuners set many functions in a race car to go on and off at certain times. This however is not happening with conventional analog systems, relays, and the abundance of wiring running up and down a car. These analog systems can have a fairly significant variance. They can also severely hinder all electrical operations because they spike voltage, build heat, and slow down. It would be impossible to get anywhere on time, if your clock moved forward or backward an unknown amount each day. It’s the same with a race car. If you can not depend on a system to turn a parameter on and off at exactly the same time each run, there is no way the tuner can ever know what is happening. It’s also impossible to be consistent. If the tuner can rest assure that all systems are working with precision accuracy, only then can a race car really be tuned to 100% of its potential.
The second function has to do with reducing the error rate of the driver. To simply fire up a race car and get to the starting line, there are many things the driver has to remember to do. Missing even one simple step can lose the race and in the worst case cause significant damage to the race car. The TFC-5 automates all of these processes. A small touch screen computer monitor is mounted in the car. All the driver has to do is touch the screen in a sequence that is as easy as ready, set, go. The digital processor does the rest by turning multiple systems on and off at the exact preset times and automatically sequences the process of steps. This allows the driver to concentrate on the most important task, which is driving the car. When the driver is able to be comfortable and assured that nothing has been forgotten, the outcome is a sharper driver. The system also allows an override, just in case the driver wants to make some last minute changes to the preset.
The last function is about durability. If you have ever searched for the break down in an electrical system, it can quickly turn into a frustrating nightmare. The reality is that our race cars currently have hundreds of feet of wire, relays, sensors, switches, and solenoids that are all subject to break down through heat, high voltage spikes, voltage variance, can be just plain slow or worse, intermittent. Even a variation in the voltage output of your battery can cause a problem with these analog systems. The TFC-5 digital system flows the electricity through your components and uses very low voltage to do it. This is in comparison to analog systems that absorb electricity and use high amounts of voltage. Once installed, the TFC-5 will eliminate massive amounts of heavy copper wiring installed in most cars along with any number of analog components. The result is a system that is more reliable and durable. In case you were wondering about the impact of acceleration and bumpy rides, the TFC-5 has survived the hardest accelerating Pro Nitrous cars in the world, it has been in crashes, and it is still working.
Interview with Chris Patrick of Automated Racing Technologies
Q: Tell me about Automated Racing Technologies. What do you have going on?
A: What we having going on right now in the world of Pro Mod nitrous drag racing and street car nitrous cars; We put together an electrical system of all digital state of the art components and put it out on the market. It’s come to be the World’s Fastest electrical system right now. We are pretty proud of that.
Q: This system has been tested in some pretty fast cars. Who’s running this system and who has helped you with the R& D in this process all along?
A: Most of the R&D was done in the Automated Racing Technologies 41 Willy’s nitrous Pro Mod driven and owned by me over the years. This year we put Jim Halsey’s new light weight Tim McAmis Camaro and Pat Stoken on to the Automated racing team. They have been doing a lot of R&D and research too. We have run some phenomenal times. Right now we hold the ADRL Pro Nitrous points lead, won three of the first five races with consistency, set mph hour records and reset it twice after.
Q: Now you mentioned consistency. How does your on board system help a racer be more consistent?
A: It’s a digital signal instead of analog. Digital signals don’t take any time to saturate coils or pull contacts. You do not have redundant wiring running back and forth in the car to do the same thing. You set a digital signal and it’s either on or off. We do this at really fast speeds as compared to saturating a coil which sometimes takes 15 to 17 hundreds. When you are only working with 4 seconds, 15 hundreds becomes a whole bunch
Q: You mentioned that the system moves at 14,000 frames per second. How does this differ from what we have now on the market?
A: There’s nothing even close. There’s nothing even in the realm of reality. Your ignition box works at about 600 frames per second. Our speeds can run up to 14,000 frames per second on certain things we do. We do it on the most critical things for example clutch switches and timers. We have a lot of emphasis put on the clutch switch and timers in the system to make sure they are as accurate and fast as possible
Q: What systems can this operate? What do you have this system hooked up to besides the clutch switch and timers?
A: Pretty much everything in the car; it becomes a management system. For years we have taken a delay box, an ignition box, or a data recorder and we have programmed them or wired them to do things they were really not supposed to do, but we made it work for us. Like we will make the ignition box send a signal to something to turn something else on. What we have done is build a system from the beginning that takes the ignition box, the data recorder, the other features you put in your car and we put them to one central control unit. The control unit is a third party in the car that controls all functions of the car rather than having one thing turn another thing on. The system actually knows where it’s supposed to be at any given time and where it’s supposed to go next. It becomes a quicker and more efficient system by knowing what it’s supposed to be doing.
Q: In laymen’s terms, this system is really moving all of the electronics at a much faster speed and a much more precise speed. So when you set something at a certain parameter, you can rest assure that where you placed the setting is where it’s coming on. It’s not late and it’s not early.
A: That’s correct; very much correct. There again when you’re only working with; most of this stuff we do on the east coast is only eighth of a mile. We have been 3.84 in Jim’s car. When you are working with 3 point 84 seconds to go 660 ft, every number on that ET counts, every number. If you can’t repeat every number during the whole 3.84 seconds of the many things that the car does while its going down the track, than you can’t possibly ever expect to win races unless you can repeat.
Q: We are talking about hundredths even thousands of a second here making a fundamental difference in how fast the car goes
A: That’s correct
Q: If we have a car out here running 8 seconds, say more the average racer in the country; How much of a difference does that make to me in that 8 second run?
A: The tools are only as good as the people using them. I hate to say that but it’s the truth. What you have to do and what this tool does becomes something you can depend on. With analog signals, with older systems, digi-sets, and relays, you don’t know. One time it might come on 15 hundredths late or the next time it comes on 17 hundreds late. The clutch switches are the same way. If I set the clutch 20 from the bottom, one time it will come on 15 from the bottom and the next time it will come on 25 from the bottom. So you catch yourself always chasing something and you can’t figure out why it won’t do the same thing twice. Well it probably has nothing to do with the tuner whatsoever and has everything to do with the parts on the car. So what we try to do is make something as accurate as possible therefore the tuner can be assured that when he tells it to be on, it’s on. Therefore we take that old parameter out. As you start using the system, a level of consistency just automatically comes with it
Q: So whether you are a fast guy or a slow guy, this system is going to give you repeatability and tune-ability to get the maximum potential out of your car with what you are running no matter what it is?
A: That’s correct. What it does is there again, I don’t care if you’re running four seconds, six seconds, eight, ten, twelve. It does not matter; you have parts and pieces you spend good money on. It’s all the motor you have, it’s all the car you have, it’s all the transmission your have. If you utilize 100% of everything you have and utilize it in a way to where you know you are headed forward at all times, you will get the most out of what you have. You will find that you have much more than what you think you have. Too many times we use a thing that I call brute force trauma. If my car is not fast enough, I just go to Fulton or Sonnys and I buy a bigger motor. Well that’s not necessarily the case. You know there are so many of these in the Pro Mod world today. There so many of them that have more power than what they can ever utilize anyway. They are just not utilizing it to a finite science. I mean therefore you just think you need more motor and in all actuality there is a whole lot left there, you just have got to find it. You can find it with tune-ability.
Q: So what you are telling me is actually really exciting because I don’t have to dish all that money out of pocket for bigger, better, and greater. I just have to work on fine tuning what I have and this is really what this system is about. It is allowing me to use all of what I have. So I am not forking out 60, 70, 80 thousand dollars for a bigger motor and the latest greatest on the market.
A: That’s Correct. I am not saying that you’re going to turn the average street car into a Pro Mod. There is limiting factors to everything, but if you are smart about what you do, you pay attention, you tune the car right; I will give you the ability to get the most potential out of your car and out of your motor by giving you the consistency level that you don’t normally have
Q: What is it going to cost me to get into one of these systems?
A: Base systems start at $2500.00 and then you add the modules from there depending on what you want and what you need on the car. You can go to our website at www.automatedracingtechnologies.com and go into products and pick the touch screen that you want; pick the modules that you want and think you need. You can also call and we’ll put together a package on it and email or fax it out to you, send it to you.
Q: So I can build this system over time. I don’t have to dish out the max. I can get a base unit and as time goes by and I am working on my budget, I can get more parts. What comes in the base system?
A: The base system is the total function control. It is the actual basic processor and you add modules to it from there. It will control the fans, water pump, fuel pump, the shut downs, ignition system, turn the data recorder on and off, pretty much your basic system. The base system starts by making the car more automated so the driver does not have to concentrate on anything except cutting lights. Press one screen to start it, the system goes through the whole process normally done by the driver, you just start cutting lights.
Q: So the base system is really going to take a lot of those parameters that we see out on the track, things that people mess up, forgot to turn this or that on. It’s going to take that all out of the driver’s hands so they can concentrate on driving
A: That’s correct. Too many times I’ve seen guys get worried about whether their water pump is on or their fans are on. They do their burnout, the car shuts off, they forgot to turn their fuel pump on. By then the motor has gotten lean. You know believe it or not you can hurt the motor right in the burn out when the fuel pump is off. What you do, this thing does it for you. It starts the car, puts it in gear, and does the burnout. If it’s an all naturally aspirated motor, you pretty much head up to the starting line with it. It takes some of the pressure off the driver. The driver is in the car and they get comfortable with the system. You find that the driver becomes better because they are more comfortable and they have less to deal with in the car. Anybody that has ever driven a hard running clutch-nitrous car knows that it’s not the easiest thing in the world to even get to the starting line much less to race it. What I tried to do is build something for myself when I started this whole nitrous Pro Mod thing. I wanted to build something for myself to make me a better driver and a better tuner.
